Parrot Jungle gets ready to relocate after 65 years

PINECREST -- Franz Scherr's talking parrots were drawing tourists to Florida 35 years before Mickey Mouse set up shop in Orlando.

But after being in this Miami suburb since 1936, Parrot Jungle's birds, monkeys, orangutans and alligators are packing their bags and heading to a flashy new home on Watson Island in Biscayne Bay.

The Pinecrest site closed in early November. Parrot Jungle Island is expected to open next summer on the main route between Miami and the trendy South Beach neighborhood. Park officials hope the move will boost sagging attendance, but they also want the $47 million attraction to keep some of its Old Florida charm.

Leaving Pinecrest is "really tough because ... there's a lot of history there," said park director of horticulture Jeff Shimonski, who got a summer job at Parrot Jungle 28 years ago and never left.

Scherr, an Austrian immigrant, got the idea for Parrot Jungle after moving to Homestead with his family in the 1920s. He ran a feed and supply store, where he kept a few parrots that he found friendly and easy to train.

After talking to friend Joe DuMond, who started Monkey Jungle in Miami, Scherr rented 20 acres of land for $25 a month in what would become the Miami suburb of Pinecrest. He opened Parrot Jungle on Dec. 20, 1936, charging visitors a quarter to see 25 macaws and tour the park.

It quickly became a top draw among Old Florida's roadside attractions, famous for its birds that talked and rode motorcycles across a high wire in front of awed tourists. Scherr added more birds and other animals over the years.

Winston Churchill visited in 1946, posing for a photo with a cockatoo on his shoulder, like four generations of tourists have done with other birds since the park opened.

When Scherr died in 1973, his family took over, later selling the park to veterinarians Bern Levine and Richard Schubot in 1988. Schubot died five years later.

Under Levine, the park planned to expand and offer evening shows, but Pinecrest residents and officials objected. What had been undeveloped hammock land in 1936 is now one of Miami's tony suburbs, with wealthy homeowners leery of an expanding tourist attraction.

So park officials in the mid-1990s proposed the move to an 18-acre site on Watson Island, which is owned by the city of Miami. City commissioners and voters have approved the deal, which would bring Miami about $1.2 million in rent in its first year if the projected 724,000 people visit the park, Levine said. The state would also collect a similar figure annually in sales tax, he added.

Parrot Jungle Island will have the same attractions as the original park, but the amphitheaters for trained bird and animal shows have been redesigned in a sleek, modern architectural style. Visitors still will be able to pose for pictures while holding parrots, macaws and cockatoos.

Flamingo Lake, which was filmed for the opening credits of TV's "Miami Vice" in the 1980s, will be rebuilt with almost the same design for the slinky pink birds.

The flamingos, some in their 40s and 50s, will be the most difficult to move to the new park, because of their frail, skinny legs, said general curator Trent Swigert. But they and all other animals will be in the new site at least two to three months before it opens, which is enough time for them to settle in, he said.

New to the park will be an Everglades habitat and a ballroom overlooking downtown Miami that will hold up to 1,000 people for meetings or parties. Also, a cliff face modeled after those in Manu, Peru will be the home for parrots to live in the open.